


We Need To Talk About Will

by moonmagicked



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Trauma, Will Byers Is Not Okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-02-02 19:59:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12733308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonmagicked/pseuds/moonmagicked
Summary: "It should have been over. Thatthingerupted from Will in a nightmareish mass of black, and the cabin was left silent and still in it’s wake.It should have been over, but it wasn't."ORThe mind flayer might be gone, but Will is still miles away from being okay.





	We Need To Talk About Will

It should have been over. That  _ thing _ erupted from Will in a nightmareish mass of black, and the cabin was left silent and still in it’s wake.

It should have been over, but it wasn't. 

It must have been shock, Joyce would later realize, that kept it quiet for as long as it was. 

When Will came back to himself it was slowly, too slowly, each second his eyes remained closed sending increasingly painful spikes of panic into Joyce’s heart. She wanted to crumple to the ground and sob with relief the moment his eyes finally peeled open and he called out her name as a whispered question.

“Mom?”

Will’s expression was confused for the briefest of moments before it crumpled. The tears came almost instantaneously, wracking his frail frame violently. Will sobbed and it broke Joyce's heart, but at the same time she felt whole again knowing that it was  _ Will.  _ He was crying but he wasn't screaming, he was himself and he was back in her arms and so help her god she was never letting him go again. She wrapped him up in her arms, letting her own tears fall as she held him in a grip that was probably too tight, was probably crushing his battered body, but she knew neither of them cared in that moment.

He cried and he cried until he couldn't any longer, too exhausted and drained and overwhelmed for any more tears to fall. His body still trembled in her arms as if he were impossibly cold in the furnace that had become of the cabin. He trembled under the arms of Joyce and Jonathan and Nancy, but the tears stopped.

Shock, Joyce later understood. 

Will stayed quiet as they untied him, Joyce shuddering as she peeled the blood-flecked ropes from his wrists and ankles. He stayed quiet as Joyce, Jonathan, and Nancy piled around him, each offering as much comfort as they could with their closeness. He stayed quiet as they rested while the air in the cabin cooled and his heartbeat steadied and his breaths eased.

It wasn't until they were driving home that it all fell apart again.  

Will was laying with his head in her lap in the backseat of Jonathan's car. The air was thick with the scent of sweat and residual heat rolling off their bodies. Will was still trembling and she carded her fingers through his sweat-dampened hair.

“I'm sorry,” he said suddenly in a voice that hardly sounded like his own, so hoarse and raw from screaming. The apology was sudden, the first words he'd spoken since calling out for her when he woke up. 

Joyce didn't know what he meant, what he was thinking of, but all the possibilities broke her heart. 

“You have nothing to be sorry for, sweetheart,” she said, and almost started crying again right there. 

“I'm sorry,” Will said again, as if he hadn't heard her. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

“Will, honey,” Joyce started, “it's okay, baby. It's okay.”

But Will wasn't listening. The steady shaking of his body was turning violent, erratic trembles wracking through him as he gasped over and over, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.”

“Will?” Jonathan's voice from the driver’s seat was high and laced with panic. “Mom, what's happening?”

Joyce couldn't answer him. She didn't know what was happening. The change that had overtaken Will was so sudden that she almost feared he was possessed again, that that Thing was back in her boy, making his body jerk and shake with each gasped out apology. 

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.”

“It's okay, baby, it's okay,” Joyce said. Her own voice trembled and broke, tears falling down her face for the uncountable time that day. She tried to pull him up into her arms, but he just kept shaking, shaking, shaking, like he wasn't aware of her touch at all. “You're okay. I’m here and you're safe, Will. You're safe, baby.”

“Will?” Jonathan's voice was thick with tears. The car had picked up speed and Joyce felt it jerk to the right as Jonathan twisted around to look at them in the backseat. “Will, what's wrong?”

Will’s breaths had turned sharp. He was gasping now, his whole body jerking with each intake. Joyce had seen her son shaking and seizing in the last day more than any mother ever should in a lifetime, and watching him now, body wracking with the effort to breathe, made her want to scream. 

Will looked half a shade away from a corpse, body so frail and thin she half feared his bones would snap with each tremor. His skin with ashen, the only color the violently red flush on his face as he struggled to breathe, still gasping out apologizes with every forceful breath. 

“I'msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msososorry.”

“Will!” Terror was coursing through Joyce's veins now. She had just gotten Will back. She had just gotten her boy back, and suddenly it was as if she had lost him again to his own mind. 

Will’s eyes were wide, wild and glazed and unseeing. His knees were pulled up to his chest, body contorted to make himself as small as humanly possible, and he was shaking back and forth with a violent  _ thud _ each time his spine his the back of the car seat. 

“Will! Will, look at me!”

Then Will started clawing at his skin, and Joyce finally did scream.

“ _ Will! _ ”

Joyce grabbed his wrists, guilt surging through her and she felt the bruised and raw skin beneath her fingers, but she didn't let go.

“Will, you need to calm down!” she was shouting now, fear and confusion pushing her voice shrill. 

But Will was too far gone to react. He jerked against her grip on his wrists, body twisting and shaking and for a horrid moment Joyce was sure his frail wrists were going to snap beneath her own hands.

Will was no longer apologizing, but it was no comfort when he couldn't even  _ breathe.  _ Joyce watched his body tremble with the effort to inhale, gasps coming in sharp and rapid, so fast that she was so scared he would  _ break _ .

“Baby, baby, please, you need to calm down, you need to breathe,  _ breathe _ , Will.”

It was Joyce’s turn to be blubbering out incoherent words. She was sobbing, every word laced with a sob. This wasn't fair, it wasn't fair, it wasn't  _ fair _ . Her boy, her sweet, gentle boy who didn't have a mean bone in his body, had gone through too much, too  _ damn much,  _ and Joyce wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all. It hurt her to her core, left her feeling raw and wounded and aching, and all she could think was how much she wished it could be her, how she wished she could take all Will’s pain and fear and guilt, take it all away and put it onto herself, because he didn't  _ deserve  _ it, he didn't goddamn deserve what the world had given him. 

She watched as his lips mouthed silent apologizes that he didn't have the breath to verbalize, watched as he trembled and shook, watched as he jerked his battered wrists against the grip of her hands, watched as he clawed at the air trying to find purchase on his own skin, watched as his wild and unseeing eyes stared through her as if she weren't right there next to him. She watched and she felt powerless and helpless and all she could do was sob.

Then the car door was thrown open with a burst of cold air and Nancy was there, Nancy who Joyce had forgotten was in the car with them at all, her world so narrowed down to Will and Will alone.

The car door was thrown open and then everything was still. 

Will went limp in her arms. Joyce froze, her body and mind unable to catch up for a few sickening seconds, before her instincts kicked in and she was pulling her son into her chest. She hugged him and sobbed, the sudden stillness of his body terrifying her, and her sleep-deprived and anxiety ridden mind was so sure for a moment that he had just died in her arms. 

But she could feel his pulse, still far, far too fast, and she let it ground her. 

“I'm sorry.”

It was Nancy's voice apologizing this time. Joyce looked up, blinked tears out of her eyes, and took in Nancy standing outside the car, Jonathan behind her.

Joyce hadn't noticed when the car had stopped. 

“I'm sorry,” Nancy said again in a small voice. She held up a trembling hand, syringe gripped tight in her fist. “I had to.”

Joyce understood then. 

“He was going to hurt himself,” Nancy said. Her voice quivered. “I had to.”

“It's okay,” Joyce said. It wasn't really. Nothing about any of this was okay. Nothing was okay with her son in her arms, pale and skeletal and dressed in nothing but a sweat soaked hospital gown. Nothing was okay with Will. 

“I didn't want you to have to do it,” Nancy said in a whisper. 

Joyce tore her gaze away from Will and met Nancy's eyes. Nancy looked so guilty and so young that Joyce wanted to gather her up in her arms right then.

“Thank you, Nancy,” Joyce said

Because Joyce didn't think she could've handled stabbing her son with that syringe again, and she was filled with sudden gratitude for this girl who understood that and had taken the burden from her. 

Nancy nodded. She scrubbed at her red rimmed eyes, then turned to Jonathan who still stood silent and trembling behind her. 

“I'll drive,” Nancy said, taking his hand and squeezing it. “Sit with Will.”

Jonathan nodded, his gaze still frozen in a mixture of grief and terror. He was almost unblinking, fixated on Will where he lay limp in Joyce's arms. 

Nancy gave him a gentle push down into the seat. Jonathan reached out a hand toward Will but let it hover, untouching, as if he were afraid that simply touching his brother would make him shatter.

Joyce only gripped Will harder against her chest. 

Nancy shut the car door and walked around to the driver's seat. With a shudder, the car came to life. Joyce wrapped her arms around Will just ever slightly tighter. 

“I'm so sorry, Will,” she whispered into the top of his head, kissing the sweat stained skin. “I'm so sorry, baby.”

Jonathan took Will’s hand then, tentatively at first, then tightening his grip.

“I won't let anything hurt you,” Jonathan said to Will’s unconscious form. He sounded terrified, Joyce thought, terrified but determined, and she was so proud of him. 

“I won't let anything hurt you again.” Jonathan's voice was stronger then, and he punctuated the words with a squeeze of his hand on Will’s. “I promise.”

The words made Joyce's heart ache. She was so scared. She was so scared that it was a promise that Jonathan wouldn't be able to keep. She was so scared for the next time Will woke up and what that would mean for him again. 

There was so much out there that wanted to hurt her son, so much she had already failed to protect him from, so much more that she could possibly fail to keep him from. 

Joyce Byers would walk through hell to keep Will safe, she would fight every monster and every horror to protect her boy. 

But she was so scared at the thought that one of the things she might have to protect him from was himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Give Will Byers a break 2k17
> 
> I wanted to see more of the immediate aftermath of his possession than we got, so this happened
> 
> I might possibly continue this later on. I have endless thoughts of how Will Byers Is Not Okay
> 
> (Title based off We Need To Talk About Kevin)
> 
> Thank you for reading! xo


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